{"id":206956,"date":"2010-02-17T11:06:13","date_gmt":"2010-02-17T16:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=206956"},"modified":"2023-11-13T11:07:29","modified_gmt":"2023-11-13T16:07:29","slug":"adolescent-literacy-crisis-focus-of-summary-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2010\/02\/adolescent-literacy-crisis-focus-of-summary-paper\/","title":{"rendered":"Adolescent Literacy Crisis Focus of Summary Paper"},"content":{"rendered":"
CBER Team Publishes in\u00a0Journal of Literacy Research<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n

While schools and governments were putting the top priority on teaching basic reading skills to beginners, older students have been faltering on the path to understanding what they\u2019re reading. Two-thirds of eighth- and twelfth-graders read below proficiency, and one-third of high school graduates are not prepared to read at the college level, according to research.<\/p>\n

As educator concerns alight on this emerging challenge, a team led by Michael Faggella-Luby at the\u00a0Center for Behavioral Education and Research\u00a0<\/a>in the Neag School of Education has compiled a review of recent research on adolescent literacy. Faggella-Luby\u2019s peer review article, written with doctoral students Sharon Ware and Ashley Capozzoli, has just been published in the\u00a0Journal of Literacy Research,<\/em>\u00a0one of the field\u2019s premier journals.<\/p>\n

Faggella-Luby says, as he reviewed education policies, he found recommendations for practitioners that were not tied to research. The peer review article seeks to bridge that gap. \u201cA principal and a teacher don\u2019t need to read the research,\u201d he says, \u201cbut they need to know when a recommendation is made they can trust that there\u2019s the very best cutting edge research behind it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Michael<\/a>
Michael Faggella-Luby, Ph.D.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The report\u2019s conclusion issues a \u201ccollective call to action.\u201d Faggella-Luby\u2019s team writes, \u201cStudent performance will not improve if we continue to work in disconnected silos of single-interest objectives.\u201d<\/p>\n

The findings come at the most opportune time, as a new federal administration and secretary of education focus on secondary education and the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey tend to look for summary papers, and Michael\u2019s paper is a great source of what\u2019s available,\u201d says George Sugai, the Carole J. Neag Chair in Special Education and a behavioral expert in Neag\u2019s Educational Psychology Department.<\/p>\n

Sugai adds that state policymakers are focusing their attention on the high school dropout rate. \u201cThe literacy issue runs right through the middle of that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

And, indeed, the article outlines the literacy crisis, not only as a matter of secondary school graduation but as a chasm for students to cross into higher education, the workplace and citizenship in a democratic society.<\/p>\n

Timing is urgent to act on behalf of students beyond the third grade, Faggella-Luby says. \u201cWe don\u2019t know everything about improving adolescent literacy, but we know enough to get started now. \u2026 Reading\u2019s going to change for them over time, and we need to recognize that and how we\u2019re going to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report is followed by responses from three external experts \u2013 a researcher, a practitioner and a federal policymaker \u2013 and concludes with a group of pressing questions about the literacy problem.<\/p>\n

A strong theme in the article suggests a need for content-specific teachers to incorporate formalized literacy training for struggling readers, despite time constraints in the classroom. The article calls the idea \u201cthe product of rethinking\u00a0what\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0how\u00a0<\/em>all content-area teachers teach, not solely the purview of the English Department, but rather a shared responsibility among secondary educators.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t isolate them out of the content,\u201d Sugai says of at-risk readers. And it\u2019s not too late to intervene for them, according to research cited in the article.<\/p>\n

Sugai and Faggella-Luby agree that their own realm of research and teacher training is a fertile ground for addressing the challenge.<\/p>\n

New teachers need to be armed not only with the tools to improve adolescent literacy, Sugai says, but also with the background \u201cto say in their high schools, \u2018We\u2019re not doing it, we should be doing it.\u2019 They\u2019ve got to be leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Faggella-Luby was first published as part of his doctoral work at the University of Kansas and is pleased to include Ware and Capozzoli as two first-time academic publishers in this peer review journal article.<\/p>\n

As an offshoot of their work, Faggella-Luby says the team is trying to boil down the information to 20 recommendations for reaching academic literacy to publish in a teacher-friendly journal called\u00a0Teaching Exceptional Children<\/em>. The results of the review were also presented at conferences in Kansas and New Mexico.<\/p>\n

\n
Faggella-Luby, M. N., Ware, S. M. & Capozzoli, A. (2009). Adolescent Literacy\u2014Reviewing Adolescent Literacy Reports: Key Components and Critical Questions.\u00a0Journal of Literacy Research<\/em>,\u00a041<\/em>(4), 453-475. doi:10.1080\/10862960903340199<\/div>\n
This article is available only if your library pays for access rights to the journal. Please contact the author if you have any questions.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CBER Team Publishes in\u00a0Journal of Literacy Research While schools and governments were putting the top priority on teaching basic reading skills to beginners, older students have been faltering on the path to understanding what they\u2019re reading. Two-thirds of eighth- and twelfth-graders read below proficiency, and one-third of high school graduates are not prepared to read […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1855],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2455],"class_list":["post-206956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neag"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 08:45:46","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206957,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206956\/revisions\/206957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206956"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=206956"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=206956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}